Monday, October 23, 2023
The Recent Attack
On October 7, around 6:30 a. m. local time in Israel, Hamas – the political and militant organization that serves as the ruling authority of the Gaza Strip – launched a surprising attack against Israel. Hamas is officially identified as a terrorist organization in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and Australia. The violence included large-scale violations of the Gaza-Israel border through Hamas, which controlled penetration into Israeli settlements and military bases near the Gaza border. The attacks, which targeted civilians in more than 20 Israeli cities and towns, and even an open-air music festival, led to more than 1,300 deaths and the capture of at least 150 Israelis on the first day alone. hostage at the time of publication. October 7, 2023 is now marked as the day on which the largest number of Jews were murdered since the Holocaust. Horrific videos of the bloodbath have since been posted and can be seen on the New York Times website, revealing the violence, bloodshed and utter terror that spread throughout the day. In addition to the unprecedented infiltration of those militants, Hamas fired approximately 2,200 rockets in its first attack, according to the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s national army.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially declared a “state of war” on Sunday, October 8, and began retaliating, firing rockets into Gaza and bombing what the IDF calls military targets, places where it claims to have intelligence on the fate of the victims. Hamas leadership.
Netanyahu addressed the country in a speech on the afternoon of Oct. 7. “What happened today has never been noticed before in Israel,” he said. He explained that the Israeli army was rushing to evacuate Israeli towns near the Gaza border and called on Israelis to prepare; that “this war will take time. . . And it’s going to be hard. ” He also said that “the enemy will pay an unprecedented price” and warned Gazans to “get out. “
He called Hamas “an enemy that kills young people and mothers in their homes and in their beds. “While he did not specify what Israel’s next steps would be, he called on Israelis to prepare for a protracted campaign. “This war will take time,” he added. It will be difficult. Israel has called up 360,000 reservists to enlist in the established army of 170,000 people. Although Gaza itself does not have a formal military force, Hamas does have a military wing, which serves as the de facto army for the region. According to a Reuters article, this “mini-army” is made up of about 40,000 people.
“The Israeli generals say they intend to annihilate Hamas as a political movement. I think it’s almost impossible. I don’t know if militarily they have the capacity to do that and bear the burden in terms of civilian casualties and losses of Israeli soldiers to the extreme. “Annihilate Hamas as they say they want,” said Professor Eva Bellin (POL) in an interview before the courts on October 13. Professor Bellin is the Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics in the Department of Politics and the Crown Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
The civilian death toll is among the most devastating both sides have noticed in decades: 4,100 dead in total at the time of publication, totaling 1,400 Israelis and 2,700 Gazans, not to mention the tens of thousands who have been wounded on both sides. . It is unclear exactly how many Hamas operatives crossed the Gaza border, however, according to NBC News, the IDF said the bodies of another 1,500 Hamas terrorists were discovered inside Israel’s borders, which would be a testament to the significant force deployed through Hamas. to bring other people together. At press time, around 220 Israeli infantrymen had been killed, according to the IDF.
In a 10-minute recording, Hamas army leader Mohammed Deif called the attack “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. ” He said Hamas’s reasoning for such attacks is that “the enemy will perceive that the time of their inexplicable devastation is over. ” In the recording, Deif mentions the Israeli profession of the West Bank and the “defense of the Aqsa Mosque” as two reasons for the attack, according to the New York Times. For both Jews and Muslims, the Al-Aqsa Mosque has a deep devotional meaning. In Islam, it is the third most sacred position in the world; For Jews, it is linked to the historic Temple Mount, making it a position of shared importance and ancient connection. The region has also been a former flashpoint, witnessing clashes due to competing pious claims and political tensions in the region. Deif called the infiltration a “day of wonderful revolution” and, according to the Times of Israel, he called on Arabs in and around Israel’s borders to join the attack. “Enough is enough,” Deif said. “We warned the enemy not to continue their aggression against the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is just the first step. »
According to Bellin, Hamas not only aims to be a militant organization and a governing body of Gaza, but also a social movement. Thus, even in the unlikely event of a total dismantling of Hamas, establishments such as Hamas-related schools, mosques and charities can simply persist in the social sphere, as long as other people remain attached to it. ” There is help for Hamas – for the ideology, for the movement – among the Gazans. And even after 17 years of very bad governance in the region, does that mean Hamas will do it after that?I guess my answer is yes, but maybe if the IDF achieves as much military good fortune as they hope, maybe Hamas can’t possibly directly threaten Israel in the same way it did before. “Bellin said.
This attack differs from previous attacks for multiple reasons, but perhaps the two most significant are the unprecedented number of other people who managed to cross the border wall and the fact that Israel was left absolutely unprepared. The Washington Post published satellite images locating 3 gaps in the border wall, although according to the Israeli military there were gaps in another 20 to 30 points. By October 10, the IDF had secured most of the border. Hamas has used drones to disable mobile towers that are important to Israel’s high-tech system. Surveillance and defense mechanisms installed along the border. The disabling of those cell towers disrupted and impeded communication between the border and the military regarding potential violations, and rendered inactive border wall devices designed to automatically trigger such violations, Bellin said.
“There was a wonderful confidence that this electronic barrier would provide enough data and alert them to any problems, so that they would not want to assemble a massive contingent of Israeli armed forces along the Gaza border,” Bellin said. In fact, there was only one main unit of military forces guarding the Gaza border, and it was temporarily suspended due to lack of anticipated work and communication problems. According to Bellin, the IDF has chosen to prioritize the deployment of its armed forces in the West Bank rather than Gaza, due to the current tensions in the region. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are two distinct Palestinian territories with distinct geopolitical dynamics. “They thought, ‘Well, we covered the Gaza border with this billion-dollar, high-tech fence. ‘and they were wrong,” Bellin said.
Israel found itself ill-prepared because of another thing Bellin pointed out: Hamas leaders are tech-savvy. “The Israelis are so technologically complex that now Hamas says, ‘Well, we can solve this problem. ‘And in their case instead of communicating the plans for the attack via a mobile phone, which Hamas knows the Israelis can track, they reverted to the old face-to-face communication, catching the Israelis off guard.
On October 10, Israel ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel would be allowed into Gaza. “Israeli army jets have struck numerous sites in Gaza. At least another 2,700 people have been killed in Gaza, in addition to some 724 children, and thousands more have been injured by Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes as of press time, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, said that whenever an airstrike hit a Gazan “in their homes without warning,” a hostage was executed, although Hamas said the hostages were being held in “safe places and tunnels. “”Although not all of the hostages taken by Hamas have been identified, their ages are believed to range from nine months to 85 years. There are also believed to be around 20 Americans among the hostages, and the UK has said 10 of its nationals are missing, it is unclear whether they were killed or were among those captured. National Security Council spokesman John Kirthrough said in a press release that 17 Americans are still missing in Israel.
On October 12, Israel dropped thousands of leaflets via military aircraft over Gaza, warning more than a million civilians to evacuate northern Gaza. The caution and deployment of Israeli infantry soldiers near Gaza’s northern border led many to speculate that Israel was contemplating a ground invasion of Gaza, something not seen since the 2014 war sparked by kidnapping and murder. of three Israeli teenagers. through Hamas terrorists. A United Nations spokesperson, in an interview with CBS News, said an invasion of the floor would be “impossible. . . without devastating humanitarian consequences. ” According to CNN, Hamas suggested its citizens not evacuate, saying that the IDF is simply employing “psychological warfare” and aims to “create confusion among citizens and undermine the stability of our home front. ” Although Egypt agreed to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans during this war, Reuters reported that Egypt had refused to provide shelter to Gazan refugees and at press time had only allowed anyone, neither Gazans nor others, will cross its parts. of the border.
Bellin helped explain why Egypt has refused to take in refugees from Gaza, or even open its borders: “First of all, Egypt is in a very bad scenario right now. Economically, they are in a terrible scenario. ” Due to a combination of debt, inflation, tourism levels that have yet to increase since COVID-19, and hosting millions of refugees, Egypt does not even have the capacity to supply its own population at this time, Bellin explained. a negative stance toward Hamas and is “not very willing to see Hamas affiliates coming to the country. . . It is not looking for [a] massive new socio-economic burden, nor is it looking for new political threats. However, he remains hopeful that even if Egypt does not open its border, the UN and the Egyptian government would possibly have the opportunity to identify refugee camps or designated spaces for humanitarian aid near the border.
The Hamas attack in October came 50 years and one day after the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when an Arab coalition launched a joint miraculous attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Egypt’s initial objective in the attack was to gain a foothold on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and use this control as leverage to negotiate the return of lands occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. These territories included the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula, the latter of which was exchanged for peace after the Yom Kippur War. In this war, Israel has suffered only about 2,700 deaths. Hamas’ attack in 2023 has been described as unprecedented and unimaginable, and the scale of the attack is unprecedented in Israel since the Yom Kippur War.
A Brief History of Gaza
To perceive the complexity of the fighting, it is mandatory to perceive the history of the Gaza Strip. The domain became Israeli territory when it was captured through Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War. Although some of the other captured territories, such as the Sinai Peninsula, were later backed by Egypt after the peace negotiations and the Camp David Accords, the return of the Gaza Strip was never explicitly addressed in those negotiations. According to Bellin, “Gaza was not traditionally part of Egypt, so it’s most productive to put that aside and make it part of the final solution to the Palestinian problem that [former Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat was committed to. “Egypt does not want to rule the Palestinian people and Sadat believes that the Palestinians deserve to have their own territory,” Bellin said.
Israeli settlements have been built in the area and many Israelis have settled there, but in 2003 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a former general who led Israelis to victory over Egypt in 1973, proposed a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The proposal was accepted by the government and approved by the Knesset in 2005. Although many Israeli citizens opposed the concept of a withdrawal from Gaza, public polls in favour of the plan consistently showed that between 50 and 60 per cent of the population was in favour and 30 per cent of the population was in favour of withdrawal from Gaza. -40% in opposition. Sharon and many other Israelis saw this as an obligatory step toward the ultimate goal of peace with the Palestinians.
The withdrawal included the total dismantling of 21 Israeli settlements inside Gaza and the evacuation of all Israeli settlers and infantrymen from the area. Many settlers, due to their fierce opposition to the idea, had to be forcibly evacuated from their homes, which were then destroyed. . In total, 8,000 settlers were evacuated. After Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians gained part of that area, with the exception of the borders, airspace and territorial waters that Israel maintained, with the exception of the Egyptian-Gaza border, which passes through Egypt. Gaza gets its water from a combination of sources, adding wells, an oil pipeline from Israel, and desalination plants in the Mediterranean Sea, and gets the most of its electricity from Israel.
The Palestinian Authority, ruled through the Fatah party, first controlled the region. In 2006, the Palestinian territories held leadership elections and Hamas won the majority of seats with 44. 45% of the vote and won 74 of the 132 seats. , while Fatah won 41. 43% of the vote and forty-five seats.
At the time of the elections, “Hamas did not present itself as a radical movement at the time. I was under pressure that they would guarantee a non-corrupt government, that they would provide intelligent government to the other Gazans, because the Palestinians in the past, the authority was tainted by very bad governance and corruption. . . and they won in some rounds, which of course they didn’t keep,” Bellin said.
The movement of force was complex and tumultuous, and factional clashes ensued between the two groups until 2007, when Hamas seized the Gaza Strip. Fatah maintains Cisjordania. No there have been elections in Gaza since Hamas seized the area.
Bellin cited a Washington Institute survey, released in October 2023. Overall, 57 percent of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive view of Hamas, while 64 percent of Fatah. The majority of Gazans, 70 percent, supported a proposal that the Palestinian Authority would send officials and security agents to Gaza “to assume leadership of management there, while Hamas relinquishes its separate armed units. “62% of Gazans maintain a ceasefire with Israel, and 50% of Gazans agree with the following proposal: “Hamas deserves to stop calling for Israel’s destruction and instead settle for a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. “
When Hamas took control of the area, Egypt and Israel worked together to blockade the Gaza Strip, with both countries strictly measuring the movement of people and goods, and Israel imposing a naval blockade. The countries cite security considerations and the prevention of attacks as reasons for the blockade, explaining that the blockade allows them to maintain control over the access of weapons, ammunition or militant equipment to Gaza. Both countries consider Hamas a terrorist organization and have sought to isolate the group. Relations between Hamas and Israel have become increasingly violent over the years. Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel every year since the blockade began, justifying the violence as retaliation for the occupation, symbolic resistance, a call for national attention. or a defense opposed to the actions of the Israeli army, similar to the conflict. Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2007. Israel supplies at most all of Gaza’s liquid fuel and maximum of its electricity, and Gaza’s only power plant runs on crude diesel imported from Israel. Israel allows some humanitarian materials into the Gaza Strip, but not “dual-use” items, such as goods and software. The blockade is a primary humanitarian concern, as it limits access to essential goods and hampers Gaza’s economic and social development. Many foreign organizations and human rights teams have criticized the blockade, calling it illegal and saying it violates the Geneva Conventions, a framework of foreign humanitarian legal criteria for humanitarian reparation in wartime. Both Israel and Egypt say the blockade is mandatory for security reasons, and Egypt has so far refused to allow Gaza refugees to cross its border. .
As for when the war will end, Bellin says there’s no way to expect what will happen. In his eyes, the most productive conceivable solution – a solution he admits is highly unlikely – would be for “Israel to make genuine progress and succeed in causing genuine damage to Hamas in the next, say, two or three weeks. “and then, because there will be wonderful civilian suffering, the U. S. , Egypt, Qatar, and maybe Turkey — who knows — will come along and say we’ll have to negotiate anything, and a giant component of the Hamas leadership will be killed. “These negotiations would raise fears of the release of the hostages and new elections in Gaza. “Maybe we can see a somewhat more technocratic elite take over. . . Over the past 20 years, politics in the Israel region and at least among Palestinians in Gaza has been controlled by extremists and the center simply lost its grip. however, that doesn’t mean that most people, at least for now, aren’t still centrists,” Bellin said.
Bellin explained that in 2000, Israelis and Palestinians were very close to achieving peace and that a two-state solution had the support of many Arab countries. US President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at Camp David in an effort to find a peace solution. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter hosted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to negotiate a peace agreement, which ultimately resulted in a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, with Egypt being the first Arab country to officially recognize to the State of Israel. There was a collective hope that the 2000 Camp David Summit could achieve a similar result, but the Summit ended without an agreement. Although Barak spoke in favor of a two-state solution, Arafat procrastinated and ultimately refused to officially settle for any peace treaty. The failure of the agreement was a fundamental setback to the prospects for peace and was most likely the cause of the Second Intifada in 2000, a primary Palestinian uprising and wave of violence against Israeli civilians. Bellin believes that the main Arab powers would show the same today as in 2000, fueling their optimism about an eventual peace.
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